


Fractures (just a crack in the glass)

by EmeraldTulip



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, I'll add ship and character tags as the story moves along, and max and el, and max and will, i just really really really want will and el to be friends, i just want all of them to be friends okay???, it's canon compliant up to s2 ep2, the ampersands mean friendship!!!! ships will come later
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-08
Updated: 2018-11-06
Packaged: 2019-03-15 08:50:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13609845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmeraldTulip/pseuds/EmeraldTulip
Summary: “Who’s there?” he calls, a chill running up his spine. “Where am I?”“Will.” And then she’s there, rightthere, like he’s been seeing in his dreams so frequently all the way back since December. There’s relief in her voice. “You’re here.”//That’s when El understands, even through the haze of pain: the monster was never chasing afterher. It wanted Will the whole time. And she let it happen.





	1. Will

**Author's Note:**

> ooh my first multi-chapter stranger things fic! im very excited to be sharing this with you all. its a work in progress but i know how it will all play out, mostly. im not sure about some ships and to what extent certain characters will be involved. i guess well find out together!  
> this is written purely because i wished that will and el interacted more. i also want max to have nice friends. so heres both. its canon compliant up to season 2 episode 2, halloween night when will sees the monster close-up and tells mike about it. then it gets a little crazy.  
> anyway, i hope you all like it!

**March 6, 1984**

_Will. Can you hear me?_

He gasps and opens his eyes. He’s in his room, in his own bed, at home. He’s safe. There’s no one there.

But then—

_Will! Wake up!_

And he gasps and opens his eyes and is met only with blackness.

A scream catches in his throat when there’s a flicker of movement in his peripheral vision. Water sloshes around his feet as he turns—when did he stand up? Where did the water come from?

“Who’s there?” he calls, a chill running up his spine. “Where am I?”

“Will.” And then she’s there, right _there_ , like he’s been seeing in his dreams so frequently all the way back since December. There’s relief in her voice. “You’re here.”

“Eleven,” he says, stepping towards her until something gets in his way and he finds that he can’t. He lifts his hands and they land, palms flat, against an invisible wall that is smooth and cold like glass. He doesn’t know how he hadn’t noticed it before—it’s actually more like a mirror than a window, like what they have in police stations, reflecting his own image back at him and only letting El’s image pass through when they get close enough. “You’re alive.” He pushes harder against the barrier, desperate to feel the warmth of her skin as her own fingers align with his on the other side. “What’s happening? What is this place?”

“The In-Between,” she replies factually, simply, pressing forward as well. “I’ve been trying to find you. Or anyone, everyone, but I’m glad it’s you.”

“We thought you were dead,” he says, water soaking into his socks. “Mike… Lucas, Dustin, we all thought you were dead.”

There’s a flash of sorrow in her eyes, dark and painful. “I’m okay,” she asserts. “I’m with Hopper. I’m alive. But there’s something bad coming. You can’t tell anyone—about me, about it. It’s looking for something—someone. I can feel it.”

“You?” he questions. “Is that why I can’t tell? Is it, whatever it is, looking for you?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “But who else?”

Will thinks, but in truth, he doesn’t know. There’s only one person with abilities like hers that he knows. She’s the one who escaped the Upside-Down. She’s the one who feels the monster coming. “Does Hopper know?” he asks instead. “Does he know about the bad thing?”

She shakes her head. “No. I want to keep him safe. If I hide… if the monster can’t find me, I think it’ll go away.”

“If it finds you, I’ll protect you,” Will says, almost without thinking about it, and it’s strange because he knows she can fend for herself but there’s such conviction behind his words that he believes himself. He would fight for her if it killed him.

She smiles, small and thin, the only way she knows how. “Thank you.” Her smile fades slightly until it’s barely there, lip twisting. She tilts her head slightly, like she’s listening to something he can’t hear, and she pales. “I have to go.” She takes a step back, away from the barrier, and the mirror seems to obscure her. “I’m sorry. The longer I’m here the faster it finds me. I have to go.”

“El!” he calls. “El, what can I do? What do I tell the others?”

“You have to hide, Will,” she shouts back, turning to run. “And don’t. Don’t tell.”

“El!” he yells, and she dissipates into smoke. There are so many things he still wants to tell her, so many questions he has—the first of which sits on the tip of his tongue: _But Mike. What do I tell him?_

But she’s gone, and he wakes up with a scream bubbling up in his throat. It doesn’t come out, and he lies in his bed until the sun rises.

* * *

**June 18, 1984**

“I’m sorry I ran,” she says quietly. “But I can’t stay long.”

“That’s okay,” he replies. It’s been three months—so long he thought that maybe his last meeting with her had only been a dream. “As long as you’re safe.”

Her lip pulls. “Yes. Safe.”

He’s worried.

* * *

She visits three more times before Halloween. Every time, they press their palms against the glass and pretend they’re making contact, like visitors in a prison. The only question is who the prisoner is as opposed to the visitor.

El doesn’t tell him much. Doesn’t talk about what she’s been doing, what she’s learned, anything about Hopper. Doesn’t tell him what to do about Mike and the others. She mostly just talks to him about the monster, the thing that isn’t getting closer or further away, just… hovering. Circling. Entrapping Hawkins in a bubble that no one can see but everyone can feel.

He gets the feeling sometimes that they could figure this out, if only they could actually break this barrier between them.

* * *

**October 31, 1984**

It’s almost November by the time Will gets home, clambering out of the car and muttering a low “goodnight” to Jonathan. His mom is already sleeping, so he quietly slips into his bed and shuts his eyes.

He needs to talk to her. He just told Mike everything he knows, he just was chased by shadows. And he needs to talk to her. Now.

So he grabs his supercom and wrenches the dial to the side until white noise blares out. Lying back, he closes his eyes.

_El. Eleven, can you hear me?_

He’s never been conscious when entering the In-Between. He’s always been pulled in by El or fallen in himself. He’s never _tried_ before, never forced himself in.

_El?_

He pictures her, standing out in the void, the water cold on their feet with the glass between them.

_El!_

_Will?_

He chokes on his next breath and he’s there. “El?”

“Will, what’s wrong?” she asks, eyes wide and startled. She looks disoriented, and he feels bad  for pulling her into this void. But this is important.

“It came after me,” he says desperately. “I was with Mike and Lucas and Dustin and Max—”

She frowns. “Max?”

“She’s new at school,” Will explains quickly. “She’s cool. Red hair, skateboard—like a flat bike you stand on,” he describes. “We want to be friends with her so she was with us. You’ll like her, when you meet her.” Assuming they ever meet at all. “But that’s not the point. We got split up and I was with Mike and then I was back in the Upside-Down. And, El, something came after me. Shadows. The monster. It came after _me_ and I don't know what it is. I couldn’t even wake up by myself!”

“Hey,” she says, pressing her hand to the mirror, splaying her fingers and trying to reach him. “We’ll figure it out.”

It’s not her fault, but a wave of rage washes over him at her words and he smashes his fist into the barrier. “Why. Is. This. Here!” El’s eyes widen and she pulls back, but he doesn’t care and his next punch goes straight through. He gasps in shock and pain as glass shards puncture his skin, but then hairline fractures are spreading through the mirror and all of that is forgotten.

“Will!” El shouts in disbelief, arms coming up to cover her face, and as soon as the name leaves her mouth the whole barrier comes down. The water rises up, up, up until it’s a tidal wave that rolls over both of them, soaking them completely and knocking them back. They half-skid, half-float to a halt, limbs tangled.

_Snap._

Something collides.

It doesn’t hurt, exactly, but it certainly doesn’t feel _good_. It’s inexplicable, ineffable—but if Will thought he was alive before, he was wrong. _This_ is what that feels like, he thinks, because he can feel El’s mind align with his and their hearts skip a few beats to synchronize. This is what living must be like.

She looks at him, water dripping from her curling hair into her eyes. Her eyes mirror his, green-brown. “Will. _How_?”

“I don’t know,” he says simply. She opens her mouth to speak, but then she’s gone in a puff of smoke.

He wakes up.

* * *

**November 1, 1984**

Bob drives him to school, tells him how he conquered his own fear, and Will listens. Really, he does. But there are three major things on his mind at the same time: _Shadow. Mike. El. Shadow. Mike. El._

Because they shadow is the fear he has to conquer. Mike is the one who knows about the visions, doesn’t know if they’re real. And Will lied to him yesterday about El—when he said that Eleven would understand, Will knew that to be true, but didn’t say it. He had every opportunity to, but he _didn’t_. He lied to Mike about El being alive.

And El…

Something is different today, Will can feel it. If he focuses hard enough, he can hear something in his head like… not her voice, exactly, but something that is distinctly _hers_. His right hand still stings, but the blood is gone and the marks from the glass have faded to scars. And his left wrist itches, right where he knows her tattoo is.

Something is different. And the answer seems so obvious, but he just can’t explain it.

So he says goodbye to Bob and steps out of the car, focusing on getting to class before anything bad happens.

* * *

He knows this creature, even if Dustin doesn’t. Will remembers it, remembers coughing into the sink and the sound he heard last night. This is bad.

So he walks up to Mike in the hallway, desperate, staring up at his friend.

“What?” Mike says, perplexed.

He could lie. He could tell Mike that nothing is wrong. He could smile and shrug it off and pretend like nothing happened, like Dustin really did just find a new animal.

_Friends don’t lie._

It’s El’s voice, and he doesn’t know if it’s her or his own conscience, but it seals the deal. “Mike… please don’t get mad. I’m sorry.”

* * *

The creature—Dart—screeches, loud and shrill, and he can’t hold back the gasp that bubbles up in his throat. He drops his supercom, hears it clatter loudly—that makes it worse. He runs out of the bathroom and into the hallway, watching helplessly as the lights flicker and the world turns dark and ugly.

The shadows emerge from around the corner and he runs, _runs_.

 _It’s not real,_ something whispers to him. _Stop running. It can’t hurt you. Stop._

 _No!_ something explodes in his mind—El—and it spurs him on, giving him the energy to push open the doors and sprint outside. _Run!_

 _Stop,_ the Voice whispers, and it’s so compelling that he immediately does, feet dragging to a stop as Bob’s story bubbles to the forefront of his thoughts.

 _Will…_ this girl’s voice, suddenly foreign in his head, fades out like it would on a bad radio.

He turns on his heel, staring up at this tormenter, whatever it is. He feels tears on his face. Doesn’t know when they got there. “Go. Away.” It doesn’t and he feels the hopelessness rise up, feels his face pinch as sobs tear out of his mouth. “Go away! Go away! _Go away!_ ”

The girl’s voice blares out again, choppy and painful, like feedback on a microphone. _Run—Will!_ It hurts his ears, and she feels so wrong and invasive inside of every neural pathway in his brain, but something about that voice makes him trust her.

So he tries, really, he does. But the shadows bear down on him and, like cold medicine, a freezing slither goes down his throat. He can’t move, he can’t move, hecan’tmovehecan’tmove _Ican’tmove_

It reaches his eyes, and then the world goes dark.

Then he’s awake.


	2. Eleven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s not a voice—it’s a force, shredding through the defenses and walls in El’s mind, obliterating all of her thought and feeling with pure dark shards. It rattles around in her head, shatters all coherent thoughts, rips through her whole body, and she feels herself shake involuntarily, her vision blacking out. That pit in her chest, the one that had already been there since they’d been broken apart, widens, threatening to swallow her stuttering heart—the heart that no longer beats in time with Will’s.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes this is chapter 2. yes this is el's pov. yes i will be switching between the two of them. yes this is where things get very crazy and veer from the show. yes it picks up the morning after halloween. yes i hope you enjoy.

**November 1, 1984**

She bolts upright in her bed, gasping for air. She coughs twice, and she feels the slightest bit of water shoot from her lungs. That panic passes, quickly replaced with that over her hand. It stings, and there are raised scars on her knuckles, like she—

“Punched glass,” she mutters. She remembers the In-Between last night. She closes her eyes, focuses, and suddenly she’s standing next to Will. They’re in school, not the Void, and there are so many people walking around so she steps closer to Will. He’s looking up at Mike, and her heart leaps because she’s seen him frequently—almost every night, when he radios—but always in the In-Between, never so _real_.

Then she realizes that they can’t see her.

“Will?” she tries anyway. “Mike?”

Nothing. But then Mike asks, “What?” and El can hear everything Will thinks in the subsequent seconds.

_I could lie. I could say that nothing is wrong. I could say that nothing happened, that nothing is wrong nothing is wrong nothing is wrong—_

But she knows the rules. She touches his shoulder, lightly, afraid he’ll disappear—he doesn’t. “Friends don’t lie, Will. Friends don’t lie.”

So she listens to him tell the truth.

* * *

She grabs a coat and leaves the cabin, heart racing, knowing Hopper will be mad but not being able to bring herself to care because _Will is in trouble_. She doesn’t know how and she doesn’t know how she even knows, but something bad is happening.

This is a mistake, leaving the cabin, and she understands this. But she can’t stay shuttered in, can’t go back now. She has to _save him_.

She runs into a woman and her daughter and sloppily makes her escape by messing with the swing set behind them. And that’s even worse of a mistake, but she simply can’t stop now, can’t let herself get caught up in this woman’s worries. She runs, the roads she hasn’t seen for almost a year nearly unfamiliar. But she forces herself to remember, focusing on Will, and as she does so the path suddenly becomes clear. Her legs and lungs burn from sprinting but she pushes forward, dragging to a stop in front of the school—and, oh, she missed this. Not just the school but the _world_. A familiar bike catches her eye and she walks up to it, looking at it almost reverently, and she touches the handlebars. This is Mike’s.

She gets caught up in it, just for a moment, trying to remember her friends. It’s been so long.

Then a bolt of something jagged slices through her head and she wrenches her fingers away, coming up to clutch at her face. It’s so intense she stumbles back, frozen, as her heart rate skyrockets.

It takes her a minute to regain her balance, breathing hard, and then she sort of puts the pieces together and realizes, _Will_. That spike of fear wasn’t her own, it was his. There’s something very, very wrong.

* * *

The shadow feels… closer, somehow. El doesn’t know how that’s possible—it’s been circling Hawkins all this time, for a year, it surely couldn’t get any closer. But an icy chill runs down her back as she runs down hallways and turns corners. She closes her eyes at one point, trying to pinpoint Will, but his presence is _everywhere_ in the building, lighting up all of her sensors, useless.

She groans and opens her eyes, rubbing her temples, and that’s when she hears it. A voice, familiar but not sinister— _Mike’s_. It’s coming from the other side of a set of doors, and she approaches tentatively. Peering through the glass, her heart leaps into her throat because he’s _there_ , so close, after so long. But he’s not alone: there’s a girl with him, hair bright red, standing on a wooden board with wheels on it—like a flat bike.

 _Max_ , Will had said to her last night. This must be the new girl.

El studies her, feeling that chill creep down her arms, rooting her feet to the floor. Mike looks upset, and it’s almost like he and Max are fighting. But then Max puts down her flat bike— _skateboard_ —and grins, circling around Mike. She smiles, easy, and a pang of jealousy rips through El.

Because she wishes she could be so carefree and happy and pretty, wishes she could be in school, wishes she could freely talk to Mike. She misses him, misses _all_ of it. And it’s not Max’s fault, she knows that, but for a second she’s so, _so_ tempted to turn her head and make Max fall. Then she registers what she’s actually about to do and feels a flash of guilt. She starts to stop, but then she realizes that she’s already frozen.

A flash of fear takes over her brain then, half hers and half someone else’s, and she know’s it’s Will’s. She can’t move, but she squeezes her eyes shut and yells, _run! Will, you have to run! Run!_ And she doesn’t know where she got the idea that he needed to run from, but it sounds right.

She stands there, hands clenching and unclenching, and waits for the chill to pass, but then—

_Crack._

It’s a pain like she’s never experienced before—not in the lab with Papa, not when she banished the Demogorgon. _Nothing_. It feels like someone just… cut her spine in two, took out a portion of her brain, killed her, _something_. It _hurts_.

_Will._

_It has to be him. He’s in trouble._

The thought it strong enough to float to the surface and snap her out of it. She finds herself on her knees, mouth open in a silent scream, hunched over. There’s a dark pit in her stomach, like it’s empty, a trickle of blood coming from her nose, and she wipes it away. Her whole body throbs, but she forces herself onto her feet, unsteady on her feet. Her heart rate feels too _slow_ , and her hands and feet and face tingle. She’s just about to run when she glances through the glass and realizes why there’s blood on her face in the first place—Max is on the floor, white-faced, skateboard skidding away, and Mike is helping her up.

 _I did that,_ she realizes, and even though she didn’t mean to she knows that she had thought of it. And whatever had hurt her made her do the first thing on her mind. _I’m sorry,_ she says in her mind, wishing she could say it to Max. Wishing she could walk through those doors and wrap her arms around Mike. But it’s too dangerous—there’s still something after her.

And then there’s Will.

She turns and runs.

* * *

She bursts out of the doors of the school and skids to a stop immediately—she sees Will, in the field not far away. But the cold slither doesn’t subside at all. It almost gets worse, even.

 _Will,_ she calls out with her mind, but the name sounds weak and hollow. Different, like she’s not projecting enough. She tries again. _Will!_

There’s no response, so she tries to reach out. She searches for Will’s now-familiar signal, seemingly embedded in her brain from the night before. He’s familiar, and she felt his heart rate  and mind synch with hers not twenty minutes ago.

But now there’s nothing.

 _No,_ she insists. _He’s there. He’s right_ there _. I can get him._ She pushes forward, eyes clenched shut, reaching out. _Will!_

For a second, for just a flicker of a moment, she feels his presence in her head—proper and warm, like he’s supposed to be there—before he’s gone, leaving a dark void where his very being used to meld with El’s.

She realizes all at once what has happened: last night, Will broke the barrier separating their minds. But just now, that crack she felt, was something—someone—tearing them back apart. The realization chills her to the core, because having that direct link to Will feels so _correct_ and now it’s so _cold_ and she needs him back—now.

 _Where are you!_ she screams, and then something else screams back.

It’s not a voice—it’s a _force_ , shredding through the defenses and walls in El’s mind, obliterating all of her thought and feeling with pure dark shards. It rattles around in her head, shatters all coherent thoughts, rips through her whole body, and she feels herself shake involuntarily, her vision blacking out. That pit in her chest, the one that had already been there since they’d been broken apart, widens, threatening to swallow her stuttering heart—the heart that no longer beats in time with Will’s.

Her ears ring, and she vaguely registers that someone is screaming. She thinks it might be her. She forces her eyes open and her vision suddenly blinks: dark and stormy, like the Upside-Down, but something is wrong. There is smoke everywhere, curling toward one thing: Will’s frozen body, all the way from El in that field. It’s twisting in a way that makes El feel sick, curving around his limp body and slithering around his face; into his eyes, mouth, nose, ears.

That’s when El understands, even through the haze of pain: the monster was never chasing after _her_. It wanted Will the whole time. And she let it happen.

 _Yes,_ the Voice whispers. It sounds like Papa, but she knows that’s just her rattled half-mind playing tricks on her. _You failed him. You couldn’t save him. He’s_ mine _now, and it’s all your fault!_

She feels her nails dig into her palms as her fists clench. _“Get out of my head!”_ she screams, maybe out loud, maybe in her mind, maybe both. However she does it, it works, because the vise-like grip she hadn’t realized was around her head loosens. Her feet, which, again, without realizing it, had been hovering an inch above the ground, fall back to earth. Her knees buckle immediately and she collapses, pain still rippling through every inch of her body, but she manages to push herself up and crawl around the side of the building, out of sight. She collapses against the wall.

The icy tendrils are still circling Will, she knows, and there’s nothing she can do to stop it.

She shivers, feels that awful dark hole gape a little more, start to eat away at her heart. Her mind feels slow and sluggish and empty, all the thoughts she hadn’t truly realized were Will’s—gone. Even in just a day, she’d become intrinsically connected to Will, in a way that makes it so that now her own heart, beating solo, feels wrong.

But there’s nothing she can do to fix it.

She hears Mike’s voice, then, yelling as the doors fly open. She leans around the corner of the building and watches him run straight to Will, fear and concern in his voice, and he grabs the shorter boy by the shoulder and shakes him.

She can’t be here. Someone will find her if she stays—or maybe even that thing. She has to leave.

With a heavy heart, she stumbles to her feet and runs into the woods. Maybe she can get home before Hopper does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> drop me a review! id love to talk about the potential future of this story. i have a pretty clear idea but im always up for something new and id love to have some input! thanks for reading!


	3. Will

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everything is still a little fuzzy, still a little dark around the edges, but Will remembers something. Something that he wasn’t supposed to say, although he can’t recall why. _She was here. Somewhere. In my dreams. Why?_ Something dangerous, he remembers. But he’s tired. So tired.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whoops i meant to update this like a week ago. this is fine. i do want to just say that this chapter is very similar to the first half of ep 4, so if it feels like i didn't change a whole lot, well, youre right. its building up, though, and it all has relevance. so, yeah, i hope you enjoy!

**November 1, 1984**  

It’s harsh and painful, the way air scrapes down his throat as he’s jolted back to consciousness. He can’t breathe. His mother—when did she get here?—shakes him, her fingers digging into his shoulders. There’s something cold in the pit of his stomach, something freezing pulsing behind his eyes. He shakes her off, cloudy, stumbling back.

“What—?” The word catches in his mouth, tripping over his thoughts. There’s too few and too many at the same time, and he doesn’t know where to start.

She steps toward him, but he shies away.

“Will,” Mike says, “what happened? Are you okay?” And that’s when Will realizes that his friends are there.

“I don’t know.”

All his friends, except for—

“El,” he says, the word falling out of his mouth.

Mike blinks like he’s been slapped, Max frowns, and Lucas and Dustin both freeze—Will can, strange, _feel_ them holding their breath. No. This is too much.

His mother looks a little stunned. “Will, honey,” she starts, “I think I’m going to bring you home.”

“Wait!” Mike yelps before catching himself. He composes himself—Will knows him better than anyone, and watches (feels) him take a breath and calm his thoughts. “Will, wait. What did you just say?”

And everything is still a little fuzzy, still a little dark around the edges, but Will remembers something. Something that he wasn’t supposed to say, although he can’t recall why. _She was here. Somewhere. In my dreams. Why?_ Something dangerous, he remembers. But he’s tired. So tired. “What?” he replies, his haziness lending his lie a hint of truth, and he feels his heart drop just a little as Mike’s hopeful look does, too.

* * *

He knows he scared them. He heard Max as his mother was leading him to the car—it freaked her out.

But his friends… they know it’s getting worse.

And his mother must know, too, because the whole car ride home she says nothing. She’s silent as she unlocks the door, she’s silent as she sits him down at the table, she’s silent as she fumbles for a cigarette and stares at him. Her eyes are concerned, but also afraid and angry. It doesn’t feel good to be under that glare—it’s like he’s a bug under glass.

She asks him to tell her what happened, and he can’t. He _can’t_. How does he explain that there was a cold, dark thing after him? How does he explain that Eleven, the girl who _died_ last year, is the one who helped him understand? How does he explain that she visited him in his dreams? How does he explain that he feels like he’s underwater, like he’s drowning, like he hasn’t even really woken up yet?

How does anyone explain any of that?

So he tells her it all went blank, and then he woke up.

She sighs. “Will, I need you to tell me the truth.”

“I am!” he stutters half-heartedly.

She sighs again, stands up, and walks to the next room where she picks something up and marches back. It’s a sheet of wax paper with a drawing on it that isn’t his.

“This shape, I saw it on the video tape from Halloween. It’s the same shape as… as your drawing.”

He knows the drawing—the figure he’s seen in his dreams, the thing he saw in the field. The thing that makes him feel cold and fuzzy. He stares at the table.

She continues. “These episodes that you’re having, I think Dr. Owens is wrong. I think they’re real.” She gestures widely, the smoke from her cigarette billowing. He’s used to the smell, but something about this makes his nose hurt anyway. “But… but I can’t help you if I don’t know what’s going on. So you have to talk to me. Please. No more secrets, okay?”

He finally manages to meet her gaze, and he feels himself nod. He can’t—there’s too much to tell her, he can’t even begin to explain it all—but it can be a start.

“Okay,” she breathes. “Did… did you see this thing again on the field?”

He thinks back—his feet dragging as he ran, turning to face the monster. He nods. “Yes.”

Her eyebrows draw together. “Did… did you know it was after you?”

“Yes.” This is a more instinctual answer, one that pops out without even needing to think about it.

“Did anyone… tell you about it?” she asks, her tone slowing. Will knows hesitance when he hears it, and he knows why she’s asking. _El._

“No,” he says. And this is a lie, because she told him about a dark thing, but even if everything is fuzzy the one thing that’s embedded in him is _don’t tell_.

She looks at him funny, but asks, “What… what is it?”

He tries to picture the monster, the mountain of shadows, but it’s too cloudy in his brain. “I don’t know. It’s…” He stutters to a stop, trying to gather his thoughts. “Almost more like… uh—a f-feeling?”

“Like the one you had that night at the… the arcade?” she presses, and, oh, Will doesn’t know.

He remembers little bits of that night—the game, the snow, the lights flickering. He remembers staring up at the sky and seeing a storm, remembers Mike’s voice and the feeling of a pull from far away, remembers having an arm put around his shoulders as he was led back inside. He remembers feeling cold, although it was nothing like this.

He nods. “Yes.”

She shakes her head. “W-what… what does it want?”

He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know, El doesn’t know, he doesn’t know.

“I d-don’t know. It came for me… and… and I tried. I t-tried to make it go away.” His throat is tightening and it’s hard to breathe again, and he feels his eyes sting. “But it got me, Mom.”

He can see that she’s struggling, too. “Well, what does that mean?”

The tears finally push through and spill down, and he finally stops holding back. He remembers El’s voice in his head, turning loud and unfamiliar, as the shadows closed in. He remembers her presence vanishing, like they had been cut off, and having the darkness press in instead. He remembers what it felt like to be engulfed in it. “I felt it… everywhere. _Everywhere_.” It’s everything and everywhere, circling and surrounding him, and he can’t think straight and can’t hear El’s voice anymore and he’s so, so _scared_. “I—I still feel it…” A sob wracks his body and he leans into it, desperate. “I just want this to be _over_ …”

Because hasn’t he gone through enough? Wasn’t being lost in a horrible dimension for a week a good enough punishment for whatever it is he did? Wasn’t being plagued by nightmares enough? Wasn’t hearing Eleven, only to lose her voice again, enough? Why does it never stop?

He falls forward and his mother’s arms wrap around him, and she whispers lies to him, over and over: “It’s okay. It’s okay.” She pulls back and takes his face into her hands. “Hey. Listen. Look, look at me. I will never, ever let anything bad happen to you ever again. Whatever’s going on in you, we’re gonna fix it. _I_ will fix it. I promise. I’m here.” She hugs him again and he wants to tell her that he loves her but she _can’t_ , she can’t promise things that she can’t do. Because she can’t fix it. No one can fix it, except for maybe one person.

* * *

His mother falls asleep almost immediately, arms wrapped around his middle, but Will searches. He looks for that link, that broken barrier between his and El’s minds. He sends out a signal, calling to her, but it sounds tinny and shallow in his own head. There’s no pit in his chest, like he would have expected if she was cut off, but it almost feels like the place she used to reside is filled by something else, something cold.

Nevertheless, he opens his eyes and finds himself standing in a dark place, water pooling around him.

“El?” he yells. Something moves in the corner of his eye, and he turns. There she is, standing still, staring at him, like she’s waiting for him. “El,” he says again, stepping forward.

Immediately, he crashes into something solid and is knocked onto his back. He groans and pushes himself to his feet, reaching out. This is different from the barrier, it looks nothing like glass or a mirror—it’s empty air, but _solid_. Like an invisible wall. He steps to the side, feeling around the barrier to see if there’s a gap, and then he hits another wall to his left.

A sinking feeling wells up in him. He turns and holds his hands out, stepping forward, and his hands meet another wall. All at once, he knows what the walls are doing.

“El!” he shouts. “I’m boxed in! Help!”

She just watches him, brow furrowed and head tilted as if she can’t hear him. He slams a hand against one of the walls, but it just bounces off—no cracks appearing like they did before. The clear box is surrounding him, he’s sure of it, but he doesn’t know how to get out.

Then there’s a splashing noise and he looks down. The water is to his ankles.

 _It wasn’t before, was it?_ he asks himself, and instinctively he knows it wasn’t. It had been just a thin layer on the floor, but now, within his box, it’s rising. Fear wells up in his chest.

“El!” he yells. “Help!”

And then, finally, she moves and his heart sinks. She raises her arms to the side, outstretched like she’s about to take off and fly, and then she dissipates into smoke. It’s not like the white smoke Will is familiar with here, the smoke he sees when they wake up and are pulled out of the In-Between, but thick black fog just like the kind that enveloped him in the field.

The smoke draws closer and closer until it’s circling his box, surrounding him, and the temperature drops until Will can see his breath. The water doesn’t freeze, doesn’t turn into ice, instead just sits at ankle-level until he squeezes his eyes shut and forces himself into his own eyes.

* * *

 

**November 2, 1984**

Will wakes up alone, but he can hear his mother talking in the hallway. The thrum of the electricity flowing to the phone lets him know that she’s making a call, and he lets himself float awake for a moment before standing up. His head throbs a little, and he tries to remember what he’d dreamt about—something about water. He can’t remember.

“Hey, how you feeling, sleepyhead?” his mom greets him gently, hanging up the phone a little more harshly than necessary. “Any better?”

Depends on what she means by better. He doesn’t feel any different than the day before, though, so he makes a noise of dissent.

“Same as last night?” she fills in. “Still weird?”

“Yeah,” he mumbles. He’s a little fuzzy still.

“Alright,” she sighs, sitting him down at the table and putting a hand to his head. She doesn’t seem to find anything wrong, so she runs to the bathroom and comes back with a thermometer. He holds it in his mouth as she checks her watch, and then she pulls it out with a reassuring grin. As soon as she looks at it, however, she frowns a little.

“Is it a fever?” he asks.

Her expression is unreadable. “No. Uh, actually, it’s cold. Do you feel cold?”

“No,” he replies, because he doesn’t. “Just little… out of it. Like I haven’t really woken up yet.” She looks at him, clearly concerned, and he draws back. “You promised no doctor.”

“And I meant it,” she assures quickly. “No doctor. You know what?” She smiles. “I’m gonna run you a nice warm bath and it’ll warm you up and hopefully get you feeling better. How’s that sound, okay?”

* * *

He walks into the bathroom and immediately something stings. It’s like all the warm steam that hangs around hot water is suddenly pure lava, burning into him. He tentatively steps closer to the water and has to physically hold back a hiss, because it’s _too hot_. He pulls out the drain and calls for his mother.

“I can cool it down a little bit, baby, but we gotta get your body temp back up,” she sighs as she sticks a finger into the draining water.

And then it’s like something cold is slithering up his throat, tightening a vise around his brain. “No,” he hears himself say, short and simple and definitive.

His mom looks at him, startled. “What?”

And suddenly Will knows what to say, even if he really doesn’t: “He likes it cold.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope you enjoyed! els chapter is next up, and it shouldnt be long until i get that up as im almost done writing it. thanks for bearing with me, everyone!
> 
> comments are, as always, appreciated.
> 
> find me on tumblr @he-lives-on-mirkwood


	4. Eleven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She has a dream—just glimpses of shadow and pinpricks of light, someone calling her name, and she strains to hear it. Then it’s gone, and when she wakes up she doesn’t remember.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> full disclosure - i didn't know how to fix this narrative timeline-wise until literally today when my friend peter helped me out so... yay (peter is @softzombieboy on tumblr go go go)  
> anyway! i think i got it and my story will now continue parallel to the show. this picks up right after el's last chapter (ch. 2) and overlaps a little with will's last chapter (ch. 3). enjoy!

**November 1, 1984**

It’s dark by the time she gets home—she’s disoriented, her internal compass swinging wildly, and she got lost. By the time she makes it back to the cabin, Hopper is already there, standing on the porch.

There are tears drying on her face, still, hours later, but she can’t let him know that. If she tells him about the shadow, about _Will_ , he will be in danger, too. This is something she needs to figure out—and without Will in her head, she’ll have to do it alone.

She sighs.

He puts out his cigarette on the porch railing, and she attempts to storm past him without issue. She makes it in the door before he starts to follow her.

“‘Friends don’t lie’,” he says, clearly angry. “Isn’t that your bullshit saying?”

She keeps walking, into her room. She doesn’t want to cry—she didn’t mean to make him angry, but she knows she let him down. And she already lost Will today, already had to walk away from Mike. It’s too much.

“Hey,” he insists. “Hey! Don’t walk away from me!” He catches the door as she tries to swing it closed, and she stops. “Where’d you go on your little field trip, huh?” he asks as she takes her coat off. “ _Where_? Did you go see Mike?”

Ah, yes, Mike. They’d argued a lot about him. Because really, El missed him, as much as she missed bikes and blanket forts and her other friends. But she would never break the rules, would never endanger herself or Hopper or Mike or anyone else to go see him. The shadow was more important.

But she can’t tell him that.

And, honestly? She had thought about going to see Mike. She went for Will, but she knows how much Mike cares about Will, and how much Will cares about Mike, so she knew. When she left, she knew that she might see Mike. And she did, but—

“He didn’t see me,” she says lowly. She can’t do this, not tonight. She’s not in the mood. She needs to think, needs to find the monster, find _Will_ , find out what happened, because that empty pit in her chest is still there and she wonders if Will is feeling the same thing.

“Yeah, well, that mother and her daughter did and they called the cops,” Hopper tells her, and El feels a stab of guilt. Monster, Will, or Mike—all that aside, she did do that anyway. “Now, did anyone else see you? Anyone at all?”

She stares at him, dumbfounded, because she hadn’t thought about all of that when she left. Hadn’t thought about how she might have put herself and Hopper in danger. She doesn’t say anything.

“Come on, I need you to think!” he says, louder, and it’s the cold edge to his voice that snaps her out of her stupor.

“Nobody saw me!” she snarls back, because he has no idea what she’s going through to protect him, to protect _everyone_ , and after the day she’s had she doesn’t need someone to yell at her, too.

“You put us in danger. You realize that, right?” Hopper tells her, low and frustrated, and she _knows_. She knows! But she didn’t do it to see her friend for no reason, that would have been stupid, and she knows she’s not. She did it to _help_. But she can’t articulate that, she can’t say what she wants to make him understand.

“ _You_ promised I go!” she retorts instead, because he did, because he said almost a year ago that he would get her outside as soon as he could. “And I never leave! Nothing ever happens!” And all she does is watch TV and sleep and talk to Will five times total and now he’s _gone_ and he’s in danger and she’s going to be shut in here forever, and she _can’t_.

“Yeah, nothing happens and you stay safe!” he says, and that’s when El realizes that this whole thing is useless, because he won’t understand. He won’t understand because she’s been in danger this _whole goddamn time_ but she can’t tell him that because as mad as they both are right now, she never wants anything evil to hurt him.

She shakes her head, holding back tears. There’s too much. “You promise,” she says, quietly. “And you lie.” And this is true, either way—if she could just leave, if she could just go talk to Will, then maybe he wouldn’t have been covered in darkness. She wouldn’t have to be afraid to see Mike, or Lucas, or Dustin. She could just go.

“I don’t lie,” he replies, quieting to match her. “I protect and I feed and I teach. And all I ask of you is that you follow three simple rules. Three rules. And you know what? You broke all of them today.” He sighs, rubbing a hand over his face. “You’re grounded. That means no TV for a week.”

“ _No_ ,” she chokes out after a second, and her feet feel glued to the floor. Because that’s how she’s been seeing people, that’s how she can find things. That’s how she listens to Mike almost every night. And if Will isn’t in her head anymore, that might be the only way she can find him. He _can’t_ take that from her.

“You have got to understand that there are consequences for your actions,” Hopper says, and for the first time all night El finds sympathy on his face—he must have seen the hopelessness on hers.

El doesn’t even know where her next words come from—they just spill from her mouth like her brain had made the connection and decided to hurt both her and Hopper. “That’s what Papa always said to me.”

That seems to hit a nerve, because Hopper’s face twitches. “Don’t—” He stops, taking a breath. “Don’t compare me to that psychotic son of a bitch.” He shakes his head. “If you ever want to go out into the world, you need to grow the hell up.”

She doesn’t want to be mad at him, but he makes it so hard. She doesn’t want a fight. So she points at the door. “Please.”

He does, and as soon as she’s out she flings her hand around and the door slams shut as she sinks to the floor with her head in her hands. She hears a single window shatter as her hands tremble, and she instinctively knows that she broke it. Sorry.

No TV? Fine. She’s just going to wait until tomorrow and use the radio.

* * *

 

She has a dream—just glimpses of shadow and pinpricks of light, someone calling her name, and she strains to hear it. Then it’s gone, and when she wakes up she doesn’t remember.

* * *

**November 2, 1984**

She watches Hopper board up that single broken window through her slightly-open door, but as soon as he finishes and turns she closes it.

“Hey, kid?” she hears him say from the other side of the door. He sighs. “Listen, um… about last night, I, uh…  I didn’t mean to lose my temper.”

It’s not quite an apology, but it’s something.

He coughs, and his voice toughens again. “Still no TV, though. You hear me? Honor code.”

“No TV,” she repeats, and then he’s gone.

* * *

She flicks the radio on and closes her eyes, searching for Will. She thinks of his distinct brainwaves, focuses on the memory of his eyes. She remembers those.

A splash indicates that she’s arrived, and when she opens her eyes, there he is. But something’s wrong. He’s on the ground, arms at his sides, eyes closed.

“Will,” she says as she drops to he knees beside him. His name echoes hollowly in the open space. She gingerly touches his hand and fights the urge to flinch back—he’s cold and stiff as a board. “Will?”

All at once, his eyes fly open and his hand moves, and El feels something push her back. The air is punched out of her lungs as she hits the ground.

“Eleven,” Will says absently, not looking at her.

“Will, hey,” she gasps as she trips to her feet, stumbling over to Will. When she does, she almost wishes she hadn’t, because his eyes are cloudy and black.

“You can’t stop this,” Will—no, not Will, the _monster_ —says. “You can’t stop _us_.”

“Where is Will?” she demands, staring down this creature. “What did you do to him?”

Will’s face twists. “He’s here. He’s strong. But I’ll win. We won’t be defeated.”

“El!” a distant voice yells, and she turns to see the person but there’s no one else there. “El, I’m here! Help!” _Will._

She whirls on the monster. “Where is he?”

It snarls. “Everywhere. Nowhere. This is the place where your minds meet, after all.”

El gapes, because it dawns on her, then, what this means. “You did this. You are why I can’t… why I can’t feel him anymore.”

It smirks at her. “He broke the barrier. I’m in his head; I can keep you out. There’s no one who can help you.”

El balls her hands into fists. “Leave. Him. Alone!” She yells the last word and the scene dissolves, Will’s body turning to black smoke. And suddenly there’s a woman, old, in a chair, eyes closed. El hopes her eyes don’t open and turn black, too. She’s saying things.

“Three to the right. Four to the left. Sunflower. Rainbow. Four-fifty. Breathe.” Then her eyes open, and there’s an audible gasp of relief El feels when she sees that the woman’s eyes are a normal, human brown. They fix on her, and then the woman says a name: “Jane.”

It’s a foreign name, one that settles uncomfortably over El’s skin like an itchy sweater, but nevertheless it sends a flash of images across her mind, memories—memories that aren’t hers.

_There’s screaming, and a baby, and—and_ his _face._ Papa’s face. _Three to the right. Four to the left. A safe opens, a gun comes out. The woman walks to the lab. There’s a shot. A man goes down. She’s walking through the halls. “Jane? Jane?”_ Whose name is that? Why doesn’t she know it? _There’s a rainbow on the wall. A girl on the ground._ No, two girls. They look familiar. _The woman reaches out to the smaller one. Then she’s pulled away. She’s being tied down. There_ he _is. “Four-fifty,” he says, another man looks at him, turns a knob, and the woman screams. There are sunflowers on the table. “Breathe,” another woman says. Then it repeats, over and over and over again. The girl’s face—not little El’s, little Jane’s, the other one. Again. And again. And again._

Then her brain reaches overload and she forces her eyes open, blood dripping down her face, numb. She lets herself rest for a moment, slumping against the base of Hopper’s couch.

“Jane,” she mumbles, testing the name. _My name?_ It feels awkward and heavy on her tongue, so different from when Mike gave her _El_.

And the woman… is that her Mama? That feels right, but it’s so strange. El doesn’t know her. That woman doesn’t know El, doesn’t know anything anymore. She lost her mind right there on that table.

She can’t focus on that. Who is the girl? The little girl with the dark hair she saw in the memory. She feels important. Maybe she can help. And something’s not right with this whole thing, but Will’s in trouble and El can’t save him by herself. So, as terrible as the idea is, she closes her eyes again and focuses on the girl’s face. Vivid eyes—so different from Will’s, whose eyes are light and green and thoughtful. Her eyes are dark brown and stormy, serious. But they are unique, so El thinks about that.

“—so we need to try a different approach,” a voice says, and El opens her eyes.

The girl is there, grown up like El, and she’s pacing. Her hair is purple and she’s wearing black, and she’s gesturing with her hands like she’s talking to someone. Her words have an odd lilt to them—she doesn’t talk quite the same as El.

“If we keep doing what we’ve been doing they’re gonna catch us. We can’t leave Chicago yet, there’s nowhere better to go and the trail’s gone cold. But we need to find more money.”

Chicago, El notes. That sounds like either a person or a place. That’s good. That’s a start.

“Wait,” the girl says suddenly, holding a hand out. She makes a face at someone El can’t see. “Don’t ‘oh, Kali,’ me! There’s someone listening.”

And that sounds like her cue to leave. El wrenches herself back into the present, but not before she sees _008_ printed on the girl’s arm. _Kali_. She rolls the name around in her head—she knows, somehow, that 008’s name is Kali. It suits her. And she might help.

So that’s that. El’s going to Chicago.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> reviews are, as always, appreciated. is this making sense? i want to know!


	5. Will

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Suddenly there’s a sharp pain in his side—for a moment he almost doesn’t notice it, it might as well just be a cramp, but then it _explodes_. There’s fire in his chest, in his throat, and he can’t breathe, can’t see, can’t feel anything but burning. He loses all sense of direction, of up and down, and he feels his knees give out.
> 
> He feels Mike’s cold hands on his side, rolling him over, as he frantically shouts his name, but then everything cuts out. _Everything._ It’s worse than when El got cut out of his mind, worse than the dark smoke swirling around him, worse than the way warmth hurts. He can’t talk, he can't cry, he can’t even pass out. This is pure, unadulterated _pain_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for such a long wait! I just got a new laptop because the old one died on me. I hope this long chapter makes up for the gap.  
> so this is dedicated to Peter, [@softzombieboy](https://softzombieboy.tumblr.com) on tumblr. he's absolutely incredible, as a person and a writer. I hope he enjoys this chapter, as well as y'all.

**November 2, 1984**

* * *

“Knock knock,” Joyce says gently, tapping on his door as she pushes it open. “We have a visitor.”

She’s trying to keep it light, Will knows. He can hear it in the fragility of her voice, the hesitance he felt when she opened the door.

But he doesn’t move. His fingers twitch—indecisive. He wants to turn, but his body is just… too heavy. So he stays, and Joyce and Hopper come over to sit beside him. Joyce fumbles for a couple of papers for a minute before handing them to Hopper.

“So this thing, this shadow thing,” Hopper begins. “You told your mom it likes it like this? It likes it cold?”

He nods, just one dip of the head. “Yeah.”

“How do you know that?” Hopper asks, and Will gets the funniest feeling that this is an interrogation.

But he doesn’t really have an answer, anyway. “I just… know,” he says.

Hopper inspects the drawing, thumb creasing the page just slightly. “Does He talk to you?”

This is better. He can answer this. “No. It’s like… I don’t have to think. I just know things now. Things I never did before.” Like how things are developing faster than they had been. Like how if he goes to sleep he’ll see the vines. Like how there’s a shard of light in Hawkins, and it’s been hidden for so long, and it’s leaving and that makes Him happy. The only thing Will doesn’t know is what that shard is and why it’s leaving. It won’t let him see that.

Hopper stands, breath escaping his lips. “And what else do you know?”

Will wracks his minds, tries to think about what he can glean and what he can say coherently. Perhaps the best course of action is to describe _how_ , not _why_ or _what_ . “It’s hard to explain. It’s like old memories in the back of my head, only… they’re not _my_ memories.” He feels his voice break a little at the end, it it’s so strange how detached he is from his body that he can’t even feel his own fear.

“Okay,” Hopper says gently, looking up at what Will knows are his own terrified eyes. Will hears the silent _go on_.

“I mean, I don’t think they’re old memories at all,” he says, almost stumbling over the words now. His chest feels looser and tighter at the same time, like he’s feeling more but all he’s getting is the panic. “They’re… they’re now-memories, happening all at once, _now_.”

“Can you describe these now-memories?” Hopper is looking at him intently, unnervingly.

He thinks. Sees the tunnels, doused in blue and ashy specks. “I don’t know. It’s—it’s hard to explain.”

“I know it’s hard,” Joyce interjects softly from his right, “but can you just… can you try?” She looks at him pleadingly. “For us?”

 _Us_ . The word throws him for a moment—she’s talking about _us_ , like a faction, like a group of people in this together. Will knows about _us_ , He doesn’t.

The tunnels flash before his eyes again. “It’s like… they’re growing, and spreading…” He feels something tug in his mind. “Killing.” Something rotten.

“The memories?” Joyce asks, and Will feels a surge of frustration because of course she doesn’t understand. No one understands except for Him.

 _And El,_ a voice whispers from deep in his mind, so far back that the dark cloud hasn’t reached it yet. _Eleven would understand,_ the voice says. It sounds like Mike.

God, Eleven. He misses her. Misses her voice, her _presence_ , in his head. Misses the way her eyes, dark and intelligent, gave him strength. Misses the warmth that filled the space in his mind where only a chilly darkness does now. Hasn’t had time to go looking for her. Hasn’t worked up the courage to try. Hasn’t asked Hopper about her—but he can’t do that anyway, because he remembers the faint memory of her voice, of her warning— _don’t tell._

“No,” he mutters, voice raspy as he feels his eyes burn with unnoticed tears. “I don’t know.” He gives up, then, falling sideways into Joyce’s arms—no, no, his _mother’s_ arms, what is _wrong_ with him? He feels the tears well up this time, understands that they are Will’s, not His, and even if he doesn’t know what’s happening Will can have this. “I’m sorry,” he whimpers into her shoulder as she shushes him.

“It’s okay, sweetie,” she assures him, but Will know she’s lying—can feel it in the way her arms are tense, can hear it in her voice, can sense it in the look she gives Hopper. “Hey, hey, sweetie,” she says after a moment, “what if you didn’t have to use words?”

And that—drawing. He can do that. The weight of his body seems bearable, for a moment, and he sits at his desk and scatters his crayons. In the hall, he can hear the phone ringing, can almost sense that he wants to pick up, but. One thing at a time.

* * *

Hopper leaves about an hour in, muttering about vines and killing until the door slams and he’s gone. Will doesn’t know where he’s going, He doesn’t either.

Hours later, and he’s done. He thinks he’s done, anyway, who knows. Joyce—no, _mom,_ for god’s sake—makes him put on a shirt and even though he’s sweating through it in minutes, it helps him feel a little more normal.

* * *

“Hey.”

Will looks up, and it’s like a weight has been lifted off his shoulders. As tired as he is, he lets a little smile flit across his face. “Mike.”

Mike’s leaning against the doorframe, backpack slung across his shoulder—he must have just come from school. And Will didn’t sense him coming closer but that just makes him feel more human.

“Missed you at school today,” Mike starts slowly. “You feeling alright?” They both hesitate for a beat, Will realizing how terrible he must look, and then Mike laughs self-deprecatingly. “Sorry. Stupid question, if you’re staying home.”

“No,” Will says, and he startles himself with how normal he suddenly feels. Anchored. “No, I’m… I’ve been worse.”

“Well, that’s not saying much,” Mike points out. Will knows it’s true—he’s been dead before, after all. Still. Mike makes some aborted gesture with his hand. “Can I come in?”

“Mike.” Will can’t help but smile. “You don’t have to ask.”

Mike grins slightly at him and walks over, dropping his bag at the foot of Will’s bed. He sits next to Will, mattress dipping slightly under his weight. “So.”

“Just you?” Will asks. He’s not _disappointed_ that only Mike came, but he is a little surprised that Lucas and Dustin aren’t here. Max, even.

“Yep.” Mike doesn’t elaborate.

“You must have a million questions,” Will says.

“Nah,” Mike shrugs. “Only about a hundred.” He shakes his head. “But before we get to those, I just…” He trails off, lips turning down into a frown.

“What?” Will prompts, praying that Mike won’t ask what he can’t answer—praying he won’t ask about _her_. (Who is he praying to? He wonders in that moment. A God he isn’t sure he believes in? The Monster? Both? Something else entirely?)

“I want to make sure you know that I’m here,” Mike says instead, almost tripping over his words like he doesn’t know how to say it, and Will feels his heart’s rhythm go unsteady for a moment—out of relief or something else, he can’t think about it. “I just. I know I wasn’t there for you on Halloween until it was too late, and I’m sorry. But I’m here this time. And I always will be.”

And, oh, Will’s actually going to cry. “Mike…”

Mike seems taken aback by his suddenly tight voice. “Um. Shit. Sorry, did I say something wrong?”

Will manages to crack a watery grin. “No, Mike. Just… thank you.”

Mike smiles crookedly. “Yeah. Um. I do have some questions now, if that’s alright?”

Well, as if Will doesn’t have explaining to do for his house’s new wallpaper. “Course.”

“Um.” Mike fidgets a little, shifting awkwardly. “I, um. I don’t know what you really remember about yesterday, on the field. But. Um. You said something, right after you woke up?”

 _El._ Yeah, Will remembers. But he doesn’t know where El is and he knows what she said. _Don’t tell_. “I don’t remember that,” he lies through his teeth, and _fuck_ , that hurts, to know that he has just concealed something of this magnitude from his—Mike. _Friends don’t lie, El, isn’t that the saying?_ he thinks bitterly. But, selfishly, he doesn’t even really want to tell the truth. And it’s worse that he doesn’t even know who he thinks he’s protecting anymore. Is he protecting El? Is he protecting her by not telling anyone that she’s alive, so she’ll be safe? Or is he protecting Mike by hiding a truth from him that he could never accept, let alone understand?

But maybe. Maybe he’s just protecting himself—from his friends drifting away from him, from this terrible new reality he’s facing, from these dreams that turn into nightmares that are only held at bay by the memory of El’s mind and Mike’s face.

“That’s—that’s okay,” Mike says, only faltering once, and Will honestly can’t tell if it’s a lie or not. “Um. What’s going on with these?” He gestures at the walls. “Why is your mom taping this up everywhere and why is it freezing?”

Will grimaces. “That’s... a little harder. Remember the shadow on Halloween?”

Mike nods slowly, realization rapidly dawning on his face. “You _did_ see it yesterday.” He shakes his head. “Did it… did it get you? Did it hurt you?”

“ _Hurt_ is a technical term, I guess. It definitely got me, though.” Will watches as Mike stands, mattress springs squeaking, and wanders over to the wall to inspect a drawing. “And ever since then I’ve been… seeing things. Memories that aren’t mine—now-memories. And I draw them.” He closes his eyes, sighs. “It’s like… it’s like I feel what the shadow monster is feeling. See what He’s seeing.”

“Like in the Upside Down?” Mike asks, running a hand over one of the drawings, and _yes_ . Mike gets it, unlike Joyce, or Hopper. _Mike gets it._

“Some of Him is there,” he agrees. “But some of Him is here, too.”

Mike stops, letting his hand fall to his side as he turns too look at him. “Here, like… in this house?”

Will swallows. “In this house, and… in _me_.” And the cold feeling is back; Will supposes even Mike can’t keep the darkness at bay forever. And things seem to be falling into place, all of a sudden, vines intertwining and weaving everywhere. “It’s like… it’s like He’s reaching into Hawkins more and more.” He feels the dip in the mattress, realizes he hadn’t even noticed Mike coming back over to sit down. Still. Again. There’s that sensation, of being grounded. He takes a breath, tries to compose himself. “And the more He spreads, the more connected to Him I feel.”

“And the more you see these now-memories,” Mike says, and god, he _gets it_ , and there’s such a relief there that Will could—

“At first I just felt it, in the back of my head,” he says, and it’s almost impossible to put into words because it’s just—it’s just a feeling. But for Mike, he’ll try. “I didn’t even really know it was there. It’s like…” He has to stop for a minute and think, try to put into words what humans were never supposed to understand. “It’s like when you have a dream, and you can’t remember it unless you think really hard. It was like that.” He’s losing his grip—he’s losing it. His hand is shaking, the hand he’s been drawing with, like it’s finally given out, the tremors spreading all up his arm. “But now it’s like… Now I remember. I remember all the time.”

“Maybe…” Mike’s voice is soft, and hesitant, and Will would listen to him all day if it meant making this all go away. ( _Liar,_ something cruel in his head whispers. _You’d listen to him all day anyway._ ) “Maybe that’s good.”

And. Huh. Wait. This is the first thing that Mike’s said all day that hasn’t made any sense.

“Good?” Will repeats incredulously, because he’s losing his goddamn mind, Michael, and it doesn’t feel very good.

“Just think about it, Will,” Mike insists, and, hell, if Mike says to think about it then Will sure is going to. “You’re like a spy now. A super spy, spying on the shadow monster.” His voice is gentle and reassuring, a tone so different than one Will would expect when paired with words that make his heart rate spike. Mike barrels on. “If you know what he’s seeing and feeling…” he shakes his head. “Maybe that’s how we can stop him.” He looks around the room, at all the drawings Will has pinned up. “Maybe all of this is happening for a reason.”

And god, Will wants to cry again, because someone finally believes in him, understands what he’s saying. Joyce is frightened for him, Hopper formed his own conclusion and left, and the monster is showing him things that don’t make sense. But Mike. His best friend. Mike believes in him.

“You really think so?” he asks, because god knows that he needs to believe it himself.

“Yeah,” Mike says, a reassuring grin on his face, and there’s something in his voice that Will has to listen to. “Yeah, I really do.”

But. But. “What if he figures out we’re spying on him?” Will asks, eyes falling from Mike’s face to that first drawing, on the floor. The red lightning seems to bounce off the page. “What if he spies back?”

“He won’t,” Mike says immediately, almost cutting him off. He sounds certain—and if not certain, then certainly determined.

But Will has to say it. “How do you know?”

Mike’s palm is soft and warm against his own hand. Will doesn’t even think he registered when it happened, but Mikes fingers curl against his, comforting and anchoring. He looks up from their hands to Mike’s eyes, dark brown and fierce. But there’s terror there, too, and as deep as it’s buried, it helps Will to know that he’s not the only one who’s afraid.

“We won’t let him,” Mike says firmly, fingers tightening around Will’s hand, just sweaty and trembling enough so that Will knows that this is _real_. God, Will would be happy to stay like this, forever, in this moment, because just for this split second there’s no shadow monster, no frightened mother, no secrets, just Mike.

“Thank you,” he whispers, because Mike’s faith in him is too much and he doesn’t know what he did to deserve it. Mike’s been in his life for as long as he can remember, and he wouldn’t change that for the world.

“Always,” Mike replies simply, squeezing his hand. It’s still shaking, and Mike doesn’t let go—if anything, he holds on tighter, letting a thumb brush over the back Will’s hand. Will appreciates it; in any other scenario this might be weird, but with Mike anchoring him, getting his mind to quiet even for just a little while, he can’t bring himself to care.

They sit in silence for a minute, Will turning his hand over and Mike tracing the lines on his palm, their breaths falling into synch.

“Mike?” Will finally asks, breaking the silence.

Mike’s not looking at him; he’s focused on their hands, on the way their fingers lock together when Will intertwines them. “Hmm?”

There’s no good way to ask it. “Why do you put up with it?”

Mike finally looks up, if only to frown at him. “What?”

Will’s whole body burns with _something_ , one part embarrassment, one part shame, one part fear in anticipation of the response, one part something else. “This. Me. The Upside Down, the way I’m messing up everyone’s lives, yours especially. Why are you still here?”

The way Mike’s face changes almost startles Will. His expression morphs into something completely ineffable—it’s open and disbelieving and so incredibly _Mike_. “Will. I just told you, I’m here. No matter what. You’re my best friend.” He shakes his head. “When… last year, when I thought you died… there was nothing anyone could do to help me. I…” he trails off, voice shaking. “I thought I lost you then. And after that, after _El_ , after what I saw with my sister when Barb died…I’m not leaving you. I’m not _losing_ you, not again.” He ducks his head to catch Will’s gaze, squeezing his hand. “Okay?”

“Okay,” Will agrees, the word coming out as a cracked whisper. He tries again, a little stronger. “Okay.”

There’s a knock on the door behind them, and they both look back to see Joyce.

“Sorry to interrupt, boys, but it’s getting late,” she says. “Mike, you don’t want to be biking in the dark, and Will should get some sleep.”

Mike glances over at him. “Um, if it’s okay, Mrs. Byers, I’d like to stay for the night.”

She seems taken aback. “Oh. Uh…” Will nods at her, minuscule, but she catches it. “Of course, Mike. I’ll get your sleeping bag from the closet.” She steps out, and that’s when Will realizes that Mike’s hand isn’t on his anymore. Almost immediately he feels a little unsteady, and then he feels weak and angry for being weak.

“I hope it’s okay,” Mike says, interrupting his train of thought.

“What?”

“Inviting myself over,” he explains, grinning slightly. “I hope it’s okay.” He clasps Will’s hand tight, once more, before dropping it with a finality.

Will can’t help but throw Mike’s word back at him. “Always,” he says with a little smile, and the beam that he gets from Mike helps him focus.

“You’re too kind, Byers,” Mike teases, and Will doesn’t know what Mike is thinking so it’s a surprise when he hugs him. He hugs back, of course, his cheek pressing into Mike’s shoulder as Mike’s head rests on top of his. “And you’re strong. You’ll get through this.”

Mike lets go and stands, shifting a few papers on the floor so there’s enough space for his sleeping bag to spread out by the bed. Joyce returns and gives Mike the sleeping bag, and the last thing Will thinks about before he sinks into scattered dreams is how glad he is that his best friend is there.

* * *

It’s not a dream. It’s a feeling. Like floating in pure darkness.

Then, all at once, he feels the vines. They’re moving—attacking. And something about it feels familiar, something about that person. Because it's a person that the vines are chasing. It’s... it’s—

* * *

**November 3, 1984**

* * *

He jolts upright, gasping for breath. He feels winded, like he’s been running, like he’s been choked.

Air slithers uncomfortably down his throat.

“Will,” a voice comes from his left, from the ground. Mike. “What’s wrong?”

He looks at Mike, eyes wide, as it comes flooding back.

He’s out of bed in an instant, darting down the hall as Mike bolts after him. Joyce is sitting in the living room, surveying the room, but her back is to them.

“Mom,” he tries. “Mom.” She doesn't seem to hear—he wonders if she got any sleep. He touches her arm. “Mom!”

“Yeah,” she answers, reflexively, touching his hand.

He recoils a little. “I saw him.”

Her face scrunches up, confused. “You saw who, baby?”

“Hopper,” he says, the name croaking as it makes its way through his blocked throat. “I think he’s in trouble.” He swallows. “I think he’s going to die.”

* * *

Will sits at the table as Mike and Joyce scramble around, taping up new drawings as he makes them. Images flash through his mind just as fast as his hands move, leaving no time to reflect upon the meaning of them. His hands just move, and move, and keep moving, until the front door flies open and Bob walks in.

“Whoa,” he says simply as he takes in the disaster. He looks at Joyce. “You weren’t kidding when you said it was a puzzle.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she mutters distractedly. “Here, here, take a look.” She ushers him over to a spot, gesturing for Will and Mike to join them. Bob stands exactly where she points and cranes his neck to look at the drawings.

“Huh,” he says. “Hmm.” He looks back at Will. “You drew all these yourself?”

 _Well, that's a technical statement,_ Will thinks, because sure, his hands did it, but his mind certainly did not. But Joyce nods quickly and so Will nods as well.

“Why, exactly?” Bob continues, and Joyce pipes up immediately.

“I—I told you the rules,” she says, starting to make her way across the room, towards a different spot on the wall. “No questions, okay? We… we just need you to help us figure out what—Bob!” She gestures for them all to follow her. “Over here.”

They crowd around the new spot, the one Will picked out, which Joyce marks with a big red X. “Where is this?”

“That's the objective,” Mike contributes unhelpfully, like the Dungeon Master he is. “Find the X.”

“Yeah?” Bob chuckles. “What’s at the X? Pirate treasure?”

Joyce’s voice is sharp. “Bob, no questions.”

It seems to sober him up a little. “Okay,” he says. He takes a breath and then takes Joyce’s arm. “Let me talk to you for a second.” They disappear around a corner.

“Hey,” Mike whispers, nudging Will’s arm as they both fall into chairs at the dining table. “How’re you holding up?”

He tips his head to the side. “Alright.”

Mike opens his mouth like he’s about to say something else, but then Bob’s voice raises and both boys turn to face him.

“That’s Lake Jordan,” Bob explains as he scuttles back into the room, pointing at the walls. “And if that’s Lake Jordan, then you can probably find…” He snaps his fingers. “Yeah! That’s, uh, Sattler’s quarry. And if you just follow it naturally… you get to the Eno River. And there it is!” he says excitedly. “That’s the Eno, do you see it?” He doesn’t seem to mind that Joyce doesn’t seem to get it. “Okay, so the lines aren’t roads. But they _act_ like roads. And they act like roads ‘cause when you follow ‘em, you’ll see…” He bursts back into the dining room. “They don’t go over water. And that’s the giveaway. That's the giveaway," he repeats. “Ha! Don't you get it? It's not a puzzle, it’s a _map_. It’s a map of Hawkins!” He laughs, and Mike looks at Will.

Will senses rather than hears Mike’s unspoken question: _is he right?_ And he doesn’t answer because everything is falling into place.

“Right, Will?” Bob asks, smiling proudly at him, and Will can’t find an answer.

* * *

They’re all yelling names of places and measurements and it’s a lot for Will’s brain, so he focuses on finding the locations they need.

“Come on, this has gotta be enough,” Joyce exclaims at one point, yanking the other end of the measuring tape from Mike and balling it up in her hand. She practically runs into the dining room, and Will follows her, Mike trailing behind.

“It's not, it's really not,” Bob insists, but he’s jotting stuff down anyway. “If you’re twisting my arm—and you _are_ twisting my arm—I would say that the X is…” He draws a narrow passage on the map. “Maybe a half mile southeast of Danford?”

Joyce seems to light up at that. "Thank you,” she exclaims, pressing a kiss to his cheek. “Thank you!” She darts off, Mike glances at Will, and they both take off after her.

“What?” Bob yells out. “Are we… we really going?”

* * *

They've been in the car for too long. Mike’s hyperactivity is acting up, his leg bouncing, and Will can feel everyone’s brains going haywire, his own most of all.

“There’s nothing,” Mike snaps at one point, looking out the window into the darkness. “There's nothing here.”

A sudden lull falls over Will’s mind as soon as Mike is done speaking, and he feels his eyes slip shut.

 _Will,_ a voice whispers, deep in his mind. It’s unfamiliar. Cold. It’s not El. He wonders where she is right now.

 _Will,_ the voice whispers again, and this time, Will lets his mind open to it. The onslaught of images is sudden and startling, but—

“Turn right,” he blurts, mouth moving on its own, interrupting whatever Bob had been saying. Mike jolts next to him.

“What?”

“I saw him,” Will insists. The face, caked in grime, cloaked in darkness—all too familiar.

Joyce has never looked so confused, peering through the window like Hopper might appear right outside. “Where?”

“Not here,” he explains, exasperated. “In my now-memories!”

She looks back at him, eyes wide with fear, as Bob asks, “In your what?”

 _They don’t have time for this._ “Turn right!” he feels himself yell.

With that, Joyce yanks the wheel to the side. Immediately, they crash into a pumpkin display, everyone yelling. She hits the break just in time to stop them from crashing into an already-parked car—Hopper’s car.

“Are you okay?” Joyce gasps out, half turning in her seat to look at him.

“Superspy,” Mike answers instead, squeezing Will’s wrist.

“What's Jim doing here?” Bob asks, looking at the police car. “Joyce?”

She doesn't answer, opting instead to unbuckle her seatbelt. “Boys, I need you to stay here."

Will and Mike protest immediately, Will’s voice rising above. “No, Mom, Mom, Mom, it’s not safe.”

“That's why I need you to stay here,” she insists. “Stay here!” The door slams shut with a finality, and for a second Will contemplates going after her.

Then he looks at Mike, eyes wide, face pale, and he knows that he can't leave him. Instead, he watches through the windshield as Joyce and Bob clamber into the dark hole in the ground.

“Do… do you want to go out there?” Mike asks tentatively, after a minute. “Not to. Not to go down. Just to take a look.”

Will looks at him. “Only if you do.” Because Mike has done so much for him already.

Mike seems to steel himself as he nods. “Yeah. Yeah, let's go.”

They approach the hole with caution, and Mike falters. “Do you see anything?” he asks. “I mean, in your now-memories?”

And Will thinks about it, but everything has gone suspiciously quiet. He shakes his head. Suddenly, there are headlights barreling towards them, past the broken pumpkin display, and he and Mike both whip around to look.

They’re Hawkins DOE vans.

Men in silver uniforms and helmets clamber out, pushing past them to jump down into the hole or surround it.

“Are there people in there?” one stops to ask, sprinting off as soon as Will and Mike both stammer out an affirmative response.

Mike grabs Will by the arm, pulling him to the side. “Can we trust these guys?” he asks, and Will just shrugs helplessly.

And suddenly there’s a sharp pain in his side—for a moment he almost doesn’t notice it, it might as well just be a cramp, but then it _explodes_. There’s fire in his chest, in his throat, and he can’t breathe, can’t see, can’t feel anything but burning. He loses all sense of direction, of up and down, and he feels his knees give out.

He feels Mike’s cold hands on his side, rolling him over, as he frantically shouts his name, but then everything cuts out. _Everything_. It’s worse than when El got cut out of his mind, worse than the dark smoke swirling around him, worse than the way warmth hurts. He can’t talk, he can't cry, he can’t even pass out. This is pure, unadulterated _pain_.

And all he can do is scream.

* * *

He only registers flashes of it.

There are people yelling, shouting. There’s someone screaming, and he thinks it’s probably him. The pain of a brain severance was _nothing_ compared to this. Everything _burns_ , it _hurts_ , so badly that he thinks every nerve is on fire, he thinks that if this pain ever ends he won’t be able to feel anything ever again.

Then, nothing.

* * *

**November 4, 1984**

* * *

It’s too bright.

That’s the first thing he notices when he wakes up, throat dry and raw-feeling, eyelids heavy. But he hears a familiar, comforting voice speaking in a hushed tone, and the word falls instinctively from his mouth:

“Mom?” he croaks, and she whips her head around to look at him. She heads over to his hospital bed—huh, he’s in a hospital—immediately, the man she was talking to is running outside and calling for assistance.

“Hey,” she says warmly, smile spreading across her face, and Mike stirs awake in the chair next to Will’s bed. “Sweetie, how’re you feeling? You okay?”

“Okay, they’re on their way,” the man calling for help says as he walks back inside. He smiles at Will with an odd familiarity as he echoes his mom’s tone of “hey.”

Will absolutely cannot place him. He looks at his mom. “Who is that?”

Her smile doesn’t fade, but her eyebrows furrow, confused. “What?” Mike echoes the sentiment with a head tilt.

The man seems taken aback, chuckling awkwardly. “It’s me, big guy. It’s Bob.” He reaches out, and Will feels bad but he pulls back immediately. He doesn’t know any Bob.

He takes in the man’s clothing, the scrubs. “Are you a… doctor?”

“No,” Bob says, and his face seems to fall. “No, it’s just me. Just… just Bob.”

His mother rubs his shoulder and Mike sits up, and Will doesn’t know what this means.

* * *

They fill his room with people, all unfamiliar, and his mother speaks in a muted voice with one older man at the door. A few doctors place nodes on his head and Will trusts them because his mother trusts them, and then the older doctor sits down and shines a light into his eyes.

“Do you know your name?” he finally asks, turning off the light.

“Will.”

“Your full name,” he presses.

Of course Will knows his name. “William Byers.”

The doctor nods encouragingly. “Do you know who I am?”

Will’s unsure of what the answer should be. “A… doctor.”

“Have we met before?”

 _No_. But something tells Will that that’s not the right answer, because everything and everyone indicates that the answer is yes. But he’s drawing a big blank. “I… don’t remember,” he says instead.

The doctor hums. “You don’t remember me?” He seems to shrug that off fairly easily. “Okay. How ‘bout… how about this guy here?” He points, and Will follows his finger to the face of the person he’s indicating.

The boy waves awkwardly, seemingly drawing in on himself anxiously. His hair is dark and his face is pale and sharp, and he’s fidgety and worried-looking. And, shit. Will knew him just a minute ago.

He realizes he’s staring only when the doctor says, “it’s alright. Take your time.”

Warmth and secrets and laughter and trust are all reflected in every aspect of this boy. Good things. He _knows_ him. He’s…

“That’s my friend,” Will says, stalling for time. He knows the answer, dammit. He _knows_ this boy. His thoughts flit through his mind like sparks and he blindly grasps for one that seems right, snags it and lodges it in his chest. “ _Mike_.”

The smile that blooms on Mike’s face is bright and pleased, a pink flush appearing high on his cheeks, and he shoves his hands in his pockets as Will’s mother sighs in relief. Even if he’s confused beyond belief, seeing those expressions on their faces warms Will right down to his core.

“What about me, kid?” a gruff voice asks from his right. Will glances up to see the man speaking. “Do you remember me?”

He scrutinizes him: beard, dark hair, tall. He looks out of his element in scrubs, but Will couldn’t say why for the life of him. He shakes his head.

“They tell me you helped save me last night,” the man says, no trace of bitterness in his face for his lack of familiarity to Will. “You remember that?”

He… saved someone?

He shakes his head.

The doctor speaks up again. “Do you remember anything about last night? About what happened?”

This is easier. “I remember they hurt me,” he says. He remembers falling, remembers Mike shouting his name. He remembers the fire.

“The doctors?”

Doctors heal. Will doesn’t remember any doctors. “No. The soldiers.”

“The soldiers hurt you,” the doctor repeats.

“They shouldn’t have done that,” Will says. “It upset Him.” It comes out more forcefully than he intended, but it’s true. It’s a warning—and a threat.

“You say,  _upset Him_ ,” the doctor says, pulling a photograph from the file sitting on his lap. “Is this Him?”

Will gazes at the drawing— _his_ drawing. The lightning in the sky, framing His dark form as He approaches. He nods.

The doctor nods. “Okay. Okay, I wanna try something.” He’s not speaking to Will anymore; he’s turned to his mother and Mike. “It’s gonna seem a little odd at first, but I think it’s really gonna help us understand what’s going on here.” He turns back to Will, places a hand on his shoulder. “Is that okay?”

Will looks down at the hand and resists the urge to break it. He nods instead. “Okay.”

A man wheels in a cart after the doctor gives a signal, and he parks it by the bed. The doctor pats his shoulder a few times. “Now Will, I want you to let us know if you feel anything, okay?”

The man ignites some instrument without further delay and lowers it into the box on the cart. Will barely has any time to think before something pinches in his ribcage.

“Do you feel anything?” the doctor asks him.

He feels tongue-tied. “L-little sting.”

“It stings? Where?”

It flares for a moment and he clasps the spot reflexively, wincing. “My—chest…”

“Okay, son,” the doctor says comfortingly as his mother leans over his bed muttering reassuring words. Then the flare increases and Will nearly chokes on his own spit. “How about now?”

“It…” he swallows down bile. “It burns.” The man by the cart moves the flame again and he feels his body writhe without him having any control. “It burns.”

“Where?”

He bites back a groan of pain as he stammers out, “everywhere!” He can’t stop the cry of agony that wells up in his throat.

“That’s enough,” his mother demands, but the pain doesn’t stop. “That’s enough!”

“Stop!” the bearded man yells. “You heard her! That’s enough!” Finally, the man moves the flame away and the bearded man rushes to say, “that’s it, we’re done.”

He gasps for breath, the pain fading to an unpleasantly warm tingle as his mother tries to comfort him.

* * *

His mother and Bob mumble things to each other after the doctors all leave, but Will doesn’t listen to any of it. He focuses on those memories, the sparks he can feel in his mind, and tries to grab at them. He catches a few: of his mother, of Mike, of a girl with short dark hair and a piercing gaze.

The ones of his mother make sense. Conversations and gifts and hugs and safety. The ones of Mike are intelligible, too—movies and laughter and secrets and warmth.

But the girl… there’s something about her that’s so enigmatic that is escapes him. He remembers water, and glass, and the feeling of their hands meeting, but not where or how. He remembers what her voice sounds like, but not what she said. He remembers promises made but not whether they were broken or not. He remembers a feeling of understanding, of knowing. Of being perfectly in synch.

He doesn’t remember her name.

Then someone shouts, and he’s back in the present.

“You said that an hour ago!” his mother rages, and Will squints to see who she’s talking to. A man, tall, uniformed, gun at his side. It hits him all at once—a soldier. Like the ones who hurt him. _Will._ Like the ones who made him burn. Like the ones who invaded the tunnels—the tunnels. _Will._ The ones in the tunnels—

“Will!”

He jolts back to reality as a hand touches his shoulder. Mike. Strangely, he doesn’t feel the urge to hit away Mike’s hand like he did with the doctor earlier.

“What’s wrong?” Mike asks softly, face clearly full of concern, “Are you hurting again?”

He opens his mouth to speak, then closes it. He doesn’t know what to say. _Remember the tunnels,_ something in him whispers. And suddenly, he _does_ know. “I—I saw something.”

“In your now-memories?”

Will nods shakily. “The shadow monster,” he says. “I think I know how to stop him.”

* * *

The doctors—they (re)tell him the main one is named Owens—set him up in a room, the table covered with a copy of his map, and he stares at it, trying to orient himself.

The doctors argue behind him, and he picks out the word “ludicrous” in the conversation, but it fades into background noise as he thinks—or, rather, as _they_ think.

He stands and moves around the side of the table, looking for a knot in the path, the knot that every instinct is screaming at him to point at. _Why there?_ he asks the voice in him, but for once, it offers no response. Nevertheless, he finds it in seconds. “That’s it,” he says, touching it.

“That’s what? What… what’s there, Will?” Owens asks, seemingly on behalf of every confused soul in the room.

“I don’t know,” he tells them. _Good. Lie._ “I just know he doesn’t want me to see there. I… think that’s important.”

* * *

He feels their movement. He knows what they’re walking into. But every limb seems to go heavy and lock, and when he’s sent back to his hospital bed he can’t even make himself protest.

He knows what’s waiting for them at the knot.

“I—I’m sorry,” he stammers, after it’s been seemingly hours of him being frozen. It probably hasn’t been that long, but nothing has felt real, especially time, since—since the girl, that girl he remembers. Since all of it.

He feels Mike’s gaze snap to him, and his mother immediately speaks, leaning forward. “What? What do you mean, sweetie?”

It takes every ounce of willpower in his body to force out the next words—there’s nothing _stopping_ him, but there’s force behind the pressure weighing the truth down. “He made me do it,” he shudders, the words ripping from his mouth.

The look on Joyce’s face is inexplicably terrified. “Who? Who made you do what?”

“I told you,” he grits out, panic welling up in his chest because if she doesn’t understand now he might never be able to explain it to her. “They upset him.” His voice breaks. “They shouldn’t have done that.” They should have _known better_. “They shouldn’t have upset him.”

“The spy,” Mike blurts out, and Will finally lets out a sob, because he _knows_ , finally, Mike _knows_. “The spy!” Mike leaps from his seat and bolts, yelling at the top of his lungs as the guards at the door stop him. “I need to get through! It’s a trap! It’s a trap! I need to warn them!” His voice screeches above the yelling of the men. “It’s a trap!”

He feels it, the second the first soldier goes down. In his chest, behind his heart, he feels that light go out.

His mother’s hands clamp on his shoulders in an instant and tear his focus away, staring him in the face. “Will, sweets, talk to me,” she pleads. “You’ve got to help me understand!”

“It’s too late,” he chokes out. Another light goes out. And another. And another. He hears someone scream, maybe in his imagination, maybe not. He feels the last light go out, senses forward movement. “You should go now,” he—warns? Threatens? “They’re almost here.” He knows _that’s_ a promise. Almost as if on cue, the alarm goes off, blaring out an ear-piercing wail.

“We’re too late,” Mike realizes, yelling it out, and he runs with Bob back into the room. “We’re too late!”

“What’s going on?” Joyce asks him, moving away from Will’s bedside, utterly confused.

“We’re under attack,” he replies. He marches with purpose over to a table against the wall, picking up a syringe. “We need to make Will sleep.”

“ _What_?” she asks incredulously.

“He’s a spy,” he accuses, waving the needle, and even if he’s right Will still feels a little hurt at the hostility. “If he knows where we are, so does the shadow monster.”

Will shakes his head vehemently. He knows where this is going, and he _has_ to stay awake. The monster… it needs his eyes. He _can’t_ sleep. “He’s lying!”

“He killed those soldiers, he’ll kill us too!” the boy shouts, and Will feels the fear well up in his throat.

“He’s lying!” he yells wildly. He needs to make them see that he can stay awake, he _needs_ to stay awake. They try to shush him, but he just shouts louder. “He’s lying! He’s lying! He’s lying!”

Shots ring out from behind the closed door, and the man reels in shock. “Those are gunshots!”

“He’s lying!” he screams over all the noise one more time for good measure, because they _need_ to understand.

“Okay, Will, Will, listen,” she pleads. “Do you know who I am?”

The question catches him by surprise, and he freezes. His mouth opens, but he can’t make anything come out.

“Do you know who I am?” she reiterates, grip tightening to the point of pain on his shoulders.

“You’re—” he stutters, stumbling over his thoughts. He tries to find those sparks, those ideas to grasp at and hold on to, but everything seems to have gone dark and cold and empty. “You’re…” He stares at her, thinks about her voice and dark eyes and everything in front of him. He tries so hard that his whole head hurts. “You’re Mom,” he spits, finally, _finally_. His mom. That’s who she is.

She stares at him, chewing on her lip. Then she looks over at the man standing at his bedside. “Hold him down,” she says firmly, voice wavering.

Before he can move, arms are winding around him and holding his frail form back. “No, no,” he mutters. “Let go! No! No! Let me go! Let go!” She takes the syringe from the boy across the room and rips off the cap, hovering over Will in an instant. “No!” he shrieks. “Let me go!”

“I’m sorry,” she apologizes as she does it. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” She plunges the needle into his arm.

Instantly, the world twists and blurs, his vision darkening, and he doesn’t have time to hear anything from the voice in his head before he’s out like a light.

* * *

In the darkness, he sees a spark. And when he snatches that spark out of the air and swallows it down, he sees a girl with short dark hair and piercing eyes. Even stranger, when the girl turns, she sees _him_.

“Will.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll try to update this soon! el's chapter is next, but will's story does carry into chicago.
> 
> as always, comments and kudos would be super appreciated! thanks for reading!

**Author's Note:**

> i hope you enjoyed! reviews are, as always, appreciated.  
> Find me on tumblr [@he-lives-on-mirkwood](https://he-lives-on-mirkwood.tumblr.com)!


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